There could be mud.

“I hope it’s a civil and intelligent discussion and people have an opportunity to explain their positions and people vote for the candidate that best suits their personal interests,” Ken Sagar, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said about the Nov. 8 special election in Linn County that could change the balance of power in the Iowa Senate. “That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

Right now, the Democrats have a 26 to 24 majority in the Senate that they’d like to hold. The Republicans, who control the Iowa House and the governor’s office, are aiming for a 25-25 sharing of power.

Special elections for Iowa legislative seats have a history of being intense, expensive and often nasty. Folks on both sides of the Senate 18 race say they’re looking for fair, clean, high-minded campaigns — unless the other side goes negative.

“Nasty? It certainly has that potential,” said Troy Price, executive director of One Iowa, the state’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization. He’s also predicted the race will be the most expensive in Iowa history — a point on which there is considerably more agreement than whether the race will be a lesson in civil political discourse.

Some estimate as much as $1 million could be spent on the race for a job that pays $25,000 a year.

Cindy Golding of Marion (right) talks with Paul Atherton of Marion in her campaign office on Wednesday, Oct. 5, in Marion. Golding is the Republican candidate for Iowa Senate 18. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

Republican Cindy Golding, 58, of rural Cedar Rapids, “will have the resources she needs to be successful,” said Matt Strawn, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa.

“We’ll do our best to match what the other side does,” Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said about financial support for Democrat Liz Mathis, 53, of Robins.

Mathis and Golding are running to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Swati Dandekar, a Marion Democrat, who took a post on the Iowa Utilities Board. Senate District 18 includes Marion and all or parts of Fairfax, Palo, Hiawatha, Robins, Alburnett, Center Point, Walker, Coggon, Prairieburg and Walford.

The biggest concern isn’t the cost of the contest but that special interests may hijack the election to further their political agendas.

Liz Mathis smiles at Ellie Nurre, 16 months, while Ellie's mom, Kate Nurre, fills out an absentee ballot request form on Wednesday, Oct. 5, while Mathis campaigned in Marion. Mathis is the Democratic candidate for Iowa Senate 18. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

“There’s going to be a whole bunch of people who are going to say, ‘It’s all about something,’ and they’ll try to define what it’s all about,” Gronstal said. “In the end, it’s all about who the people in Senate 18 want to represent them and think will do best in representing them.”

Gronstal set the tone early when he compared the special election — which is on the same day as regular municipal elections in Iowa — to the recall elections in Wisconsin. It was there that Democrats tried to flip control of the Senate through recall elections after majority Republicans rewrote public employee bargaining laws.

“We are Wisconsin now,” Gronstal said at Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry in September.

While some Democrats have tamped down that rhetoric, Gronstal and labor union leaders continue to make the connection.

“It’s a mistake to make war on the middle class,” Gronstal said. “That’s what Republicans in the Legislature and Branstad have engaged in.”

AFSCME Council 61 President Danny Homan hopes the race doesn’t become “Wisconsin-like.”

Groups allied with Golding are emphasizing the need to protect Iowa’s right to work law as well as Golding’s experience as a small businesswoman, Strawn said.

“From the party perspective, leaders around the state are investing heavily because Golding is a great candidate with a history of creating jobs and that’s exactly what we need,” Strawn said.

She’s also getting support from Team PAC Iowa, a Republican leaning group that said in a fundraising appeal the election is Iowans’ chance “to strip Sen. Gronstal of his stranglehold of power in the Iowa Senate.”

Gay marriage as issue?

From a Republican perspective, that “stranglehold” is preventing action on a host of issues ranging from the budget and taxes to other issues seen as important in creating a climate for creating jobs and growing businesses.

From a Democratic perspective, the Iowa Senate majority is preventing Republican action on a host of social issues ranging from abortion to same-sex marriage.

The GOP-controlled House earlier this year passed a resolution to put a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the ballot. Although it appears there may be enough votes in the Senate to pass the resolution, Gronstal has promised to block any action. That would be harder to do is Golding wins and he loses his 26-24 majority.

One Iowa’s Price worries some groups will attempt to make the race about same-sex marriage.

“But it’s not,” he said. “There are far too many issues facing Iowa for the election to be about any one issue.”

If history is any indication, groups on both sides of the issue are likely to make it the central issue. In 2009, the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage spent $90,000 in a Jefferson County special election where both the Democratic and Republican candidates supported a measure to allow Iowans to vote on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

That’s not the case in Senate 18.

“As most Iowans, I support the judges upholding the Constitution,” Mathis said.

“There has been a clamoring across the state to just have a voice,” Golding said. “And I think, you know, whichever way it goes, the people ought to decide.”

Seattle-based gay rights organizer Joe Mirabella recently blogged at the Huffington Post that “rarely is so much at stake for a local election.”

“You have to get involved right now. There has never been a bigger threat to equality in Iowa than this moment,” Mirabella blogged, including a link to One Iowa’s fundraising Web page.

Time is tight

Despite the passion that groups championing business, labor, same-sex marriage and other issues bring to the campaign. political operatives on all sides say that the short time frame and nature of special elections limit outside influence.

What really matters is organizational efforts on the ground — the shoe leather campaign, said Sam Roecker, spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party. With less than five weeks until the election, there’s not a lot of time for outside groups to mobilize, he said.

Both Golding and Mathis are out door-knocking and getting help from supporters with phone banks, literature drops and get-out-the-vote efforts. The Polk County GOP, for example, is bringing a bus of volunteers from Des Moines to Linn County every Saturday until the election. The AFL-CIO’s Sagar has called on union members to volunteer to help “maintain a worker-friendly majority in the Iowa Senate.”

AFSCME’s Homan expects Wisconsin union members will travel to Linn County to repay Iowans who stood by them during their occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol and in the recall elections.

“I don’t think we’ll see busloads, but there will be some volunteers,” he said.